Jan 5, 2015

Book Review: The Fault In Our Star by John Green

Annyeong and Hello buddies, i came back for more book review and i already set my read goal for 2015. Well it's not like i want-to-read-million-books-goal but it to restrain me from reading too many books funny ain't it haha. but i need to do so because you see i'm a student and this year i'm form 4 and i really take serious that form 4 is a year to struggle so you don't have to swim in pool of tears in form 5 later. i will only read one book for each month but since november and december are school holidays so i can read two books so it makes my read goal for 2015 is only 14 books. i think it is hard really how can i restrain myself when there is a Big Bad Wolf or book sales or RM5 each books at Popular end sales???? how can i but my aunt said you can buy it but stay at the policy 14 books for 2015 and let the other books stay put at the shelf. it will be hard i know but i need to do it. learned from mistakes. okay enough of babbling let start with the review but this book is not include in my goal hehe since the school holidays aren't over yet, i know i'm sly.

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

The synopsis from Goodreads well , firstly i seldom read the book if i had watch the movie and vice versa but since this was a gift from someone so i thought i might gave it a try and it really good. I finish it like 10 hours i thought, well i can't stay focus with many things to do.The Fault in Our Stars is about sixteen Hazel Grace Lancaster who has been living with a terminal illness for a quarter of her life. She's on an experimental, and entirely fictional, treatment that's buying her some additional time. No one knows whether that time will be weeks, months, or years because Hazel is riding the first wave of treatment. Much of Hazel's life has been spent preparing to die. She's a vegetarian because she wants to lessen the number of deaths she's responsible for. She worries about how her mother will deal with the shift in status from mom to no-longer-a-mom and how well her parents' marriage will hold up in the aftermath. Essentially she's tucked herself away from just about everyone to lessen the damage that will happen when, not if, she dies.She meets a boy named Augustus Waters at a cancer support group. He's attractive, charismatic, and down one leg but at the moment exhibiting no signs of recurrence. He has a future and Hazel does not. He doesn't mind Hazel's lack of future or, at least, it doesn't lessen his fascination with her. They become flirty friends, but Hazel draws the line there, refusing to be the 'grenade' that damages him with emotional shrapnel. They exchange books and bond a lot over Hazel's selection, An Imperial Affliction.An Imperial Affliction is about a girl with terminal cancer, but it's not like other cancer books where everyone is brave and tough etc etc. It was essentially the author talking at you through a curtain so he knows you understand how 'real' his book is. AIA famously ends in the middle of a sentence. Hazel gets that either Anna, the narrator of AIA, died or got too sick to continue, but she really wants to know what happens to all the side characters. Augustus, being a teenage boy trying to impress the girl, starts communicating with the author to get some answers. The author refuses to reveal the outcome of the novel in letters, emails, or over the phone as it might constitute a sequel if somehow published. He invites them to visit him in Amsterdam for the conclusion.Augustus has a Wish given to him by The Make A Wish Foundation, which he states was 'in exchange for my leg.' Hazel used her wish when her death seemed more imminent. Augustus uses his wish to take her and her mother (no Disappearing Parent Syndrome here) to Amsterdam to meet the author. The author is an angry alcoholic who finds Hazel dressing up as Anna particularly distracting and tells them very little about what they came looking for. Augustus and Hazel come together in Amsterdam. It is romantic and bittersweet. It is, after all, a first and a last love rolled into one. After they've slept together, Augustus tells Hazel that his body is essentially 'made of cancer.' The tests for cancer lit up his skeletal structure like a Christmas tree. He is terminal and while they talk about fighting and cures they both know there will be no hail mary pass or extension for Augustus, they both know the score. Augustus acknowledges the selfishness of what he's done, especially since Hazel was trying to spare him the scars he has now inflicted on her, but with the situation reversed Hazel realizes how insane it was to believe withholding herself would some how make her death easier for Augustus. The book spends several dark chapters on the end of Augustus's life and you'll probably cry like a little bitch, I know I did.This book goes deeper than high school romance and Manic Pixie Dream Girl angst. This is about life, death, illness, love, heroism, and how a sixteen-year-old is supposed to deal with the fact that she will die and leave everyone she loves behind.This is not, as Hazel Lancaster might say, a Cancer Book. None of the cancer patients in this story have a wisdom beyond their years, and they do not stoically accept the fact that they will die or fight heroically. Hazel Lancaster, a terminal sixteen-year-old who has to carry an oxygen tank everywhere because "my lungs suck at being lungs" is refreshingly real - not manic, not a pixie, not a dream girl. She reads Great Books and watches America's Next Top Model marathons. Augustus Waters, her amputee friend, wants desperately to leave a lasting impression on the world and philosophizes about heroism, and his favorite book is a novelization of a video game. Everything here is real, especially the diseases. There isn't any **** about dying gracefully here, because cancer is ugly and unpleasant, and Green makes you feel Hazel's lungs struggling to breathe and the pain, and see the vomit and urine. (Remember how in A Walk to Remember, Mandy Moore has been secretly dying of leukemia the whole time but looks great even on her deathbed? Nicholas Sparks can ***** that insult to real cancer patients) Most importantly, Hazel and Augustus are not defined by their cancer. It consumes their lives, but it doesn't define them. On every page, it's clear: this is a story told by someone who hasn't known just one person with cancer, but has seen a multitude of children with terminal diseases, and has tried to find some way to comfort them and their families. It's for that reason that I don't feel like I can review this like a normal book. John Green didn't write this story for me, And I certainly can't criticize any of its minor faults. All I can say, really, is that you have to read this for yourself, and go from there. This is the first time I’ve truly been at a loss for words. What am I supposed to say? How can I do this book justice? Maybe tell you all that it was perfect? The best, most heartbreaking, hilarious book that has touched me like none other? Sure. I mean, it's been said countless times, in countless reviews, and you know what? They are absolutely, a hundred and fifty percent true. well i don't think i can judge this book this time , let you read it and give ur opinion.

The Quotes: -“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” -“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”-“I'm in love with you," he said quietly."Augustus," I said."I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.” -“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”